Driscoll and the others: Hegseth’s resignations and purges at the Pentagon

The US Secretary of the Army Dan Driscoll has tendered his resignation to President Donald Trump and will step down from his post at the Pentagon in the coming days. The Wall Street Journal was the first to break the news of his departure. An army official told CNN that Driscoll “spoke to the President about the current situation in the army and tendered his resignation”.

The resignation of Driscoll, known as the ‘drone guy’, comes after months of tension with Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth. “Secretary Driscoll has proved extremely effective in advancing President Trump’s agenda to ‘Make America Strong Again’, providing exceptional leadership during historic military operations, restoring the focus on operational readiness and lethality, assisting in negotiations between Russia and Ukraine, and more’, said White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly in a statement.

According to the New York Times, the tension between Hegseth and Driscoll was due, in part, to the fact that Hegseth had reportedly removed four officers – two men and two women of colour – from a promotion list after Driscoll had refused to do so. The Washington Post had previously reported that Hegseth feared he would be sacked by Trump and replaced by Driscoll.

Driscoll and the Vice-President J. D. Vance were classmates at Yale Law School and have remained close friends ever since. The outgoing Secretary of the Army had also forged a personal relationship with Trump, who even tasked him with travelling to to Kyiv to persuade Ukraine to return to the negotiating table with Russia. The plan for that mission – which was unusual for Driscoll’s role and took place in November – envisaged Ukraine making significant concessions to the Kremlin in order to bring the war to an end.

The Driscoll case is merely the latest and most high-profile instance of ‘dismissal’ within the Trump administration’s Department of Defence, led by a controversial figure such as Hegseth. At the end of April, the Secretary of the Navy John Phelan was sacked without notice after clashing with Hegseth and the Deputy Secretary of Defence Stephen Feinberg. In the same month, Hegseth had sacked the Army Chief of Staff, General Randy George, without giving a reason. The previous autumn, Phelan’s chief of staff, Jon Harrison, had also left his post.